2021/083: On the Move: A Life -- Oliver Sacks

2021/083: On the Move: A Life -- Oliver Sacks

... my writings need extensive pruning and editing, because I may express the same thought in many different ways. I can get waylaid by tangential thoughts and associations in mid-sentence, and this leads to parentheses, subordinate clauses, sentences of paragraphic length. I never use one adjective if six seem to me better and, in their cumulative effect, more incisive. I am haunted by the density of reality and try to capture this with (in Clifford Geertz’s phrase) “thick description.” [loc. 2280]

Okay, six adjectives to describe Oliver Sacks, as conveyed in this memoir: shy,curious, gregarious, reckless, energetic, cerebral. But wait: that's not sufficient... Sacks is perhaps best-known as the author of Awakenings, which was made into a film starring Robert de Niro (of whom Sacks writes engagingly) and Robin Williams. Sacks was a neuropsychologist with a gift for writing about his work in accessible and poetic prose. He was also Jewish, gay and, for most of his life, an expatriate( Read more... )